They can all go die.
Living like air, Jess existed in the background like a malevolent ghost.
Jess didn’t know it, but her expression betrayed her thought. Bared teeth, knitted eyebrows and glare sharp enough to write murder.
Only her teacher was cursed with the view, Jess sat in the back of the classroom and pretended to listen in stubborn silence. Her classmates tended to ignore her out of her sheer lack of importance in their lives.
It was a brief haunting as after the lunch bell rang, the teacher quickly forgot Jess and reminded her students about the homework for tomorrow.
Jess slung on her bag around her back, and buried her hands in her pockets. Some teens might look down, but she walked with a violence. People parted out of her way like she wore sharp spikes. The fine, jagged points that would jerk away from like the thorn of a rose.
When her classmates noticed her their lips peeled back and their eyes tensed. Masks of revulsion which Jess lacked the wisdom to know the difference between outer expressions and inner feelings.
When Jess marched past one pretty girl shivered like a ghost past through her or a spider was crawling along her head. But Jess walked fast, and they soon forgot their perceived annoyance when she was out of sight.
Why can’t they all go and die?
They all continued to talk and enjoy their day. The din of noise pleasant for normies, was but agony for outsiders.
Jess plugged into her broken earphones so she at least had a mask to pretend she couldn’t hear them.
She struck out for freedom from the classroom and out of the cell. Soon, she could play and escape for a moment her thoughts about school and the other kids.
Smack went her squeaky shoes, sounds deafening with every step to her ears, but the attention of the others they heard silence and saw through her as if she were transparent. Passing out the door she followed the walls until the noise of people quietened to stop.
Outside in the frigid winter, she squatted alone outside one of the school buildings with as much cover from the wind as she could get. A quiet spot on most school days and abandoned during winter.
But, she couldn’t forget about her classmates' looks. What they must think of her? The answer came from an expected voice, “Little shite.” produced as echo in her mind.
She bit her nails and when she tore into the skin she realised she’d done it again. Her mother’s voice rang in her head overpowering any other thoughts. “You shouldn’t bite your nails.” and a wagging finger.
Jess bit her tongue to punish herself for biting her fingers. She bit and tasted the metallic liquid on her cracked lips. She sucked it down her throat and with it the shivering, icy winds.
She needed a distraction, the one she’d longed for all day. Shaking bare hands braved the cold and pulled her Switch out of her raggedy bag.
Jess played Pokemon on her switch with shivering hands. She munched on a stale, dry sandwich. In the game, she was powerful, had characters she liked and pokemon she had poured into it all her free time and energy. Here, in the game, she could find only relief from reality.
She touched the hard screen to pet her Lycan-Roc named Beau after her dog.
She consumed the saturated graphics and pretty colours. She battled npc’s and won. She caught a Makuhita. She smiled her only smile of the day.
She had long past accomplished the story and collected all the pokemon. A newer, better pokemon game was already out - she’d finished it. But, she kept playing this one.
This version was her comfort game. She’d known it better than her own body and mind, and the colours and shape of Beau were as familiar to Jess as her own breath.
“Something’s off about you.”
The words came like a knife’s point into Jess’ ribs and stabbing into her beating chest. She bit her teeth and hissed from having to endure them.
Jess looked up from her game and behind thick-rimmed, cheap glasses.
An unpleasant smirk carved across the bully’s thick lips. ‘Sexy’ Jess heard boys call Emily. Half of a dozen overlapping voices whispering about her curves. “Thicc.” They called her.
Emily’s boobs had grown early and big. They’d become the sole defining trait half the school population saw her by, and in turn the other half envied and scorned, or so Jess had observed looking in her lonely noticing.
The whole school judged her by the barrier to Emily’s heart. Not that Jess felt an ounce of care for the bully.
When Jess thought of stabbing someone to see how the knife would part the flesh Emily often came to mind. Striking back, it could be hers in a daydream, the promise of satisfaction: retaliation, revenge and control. She couldn’t do it, she wouldn’t do it, but the urge swore pain for pain.
One of the targets of her pain, Emily stood alone and over her in a thick, pink plastic coat, but all too thin stockings and short skirt. Half-practical and half-fashion garb.
Jess didn’t care about such fashion or who looked ‘sexy’, but the useless information came to mind. Like Jess, Emily had no friends among the other girls at school. But the boys leering attention meant Emily felt confident talking shit to Jess’ face.
Jess stared silently. She used the breathing technique she’d been learning. It helped her stop exploding.
“If you would just try you could catch some fish.”
Jess eyebrows gathered together. She didn’t get what Emily meant by ‘fish’. She didn’t care and it was a strange word choice considering they were freezing outside at a school.
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“How about Fergie? He’s looked.”
Jess’ cheeks enflamed bright red. ‘Fergie and looked’ Jess did get. She’d liked Fergus, her neighbour, as a very distant acquaintance. Now, he was a creep in her mind.
She’d never talk to him again, she swore to herself. He should die. Not that they’d talked much in years.
“Is boys that all you think about?” Jess mocked. “Go get a hobby.”
Emily scrunched her nose, “And play your stupid games and end up a weirdo. No thanks. Not in a million years will I be caught playing Pika Pika.”
“It’s pokemon and I’m independent. You're the weirdo that is why everyone talks about you behind your back.” Jess taunted with an unpleasant truth.
She’d softened it by not saying any of the slurs she’d overhead. A mercy unappreciated for the sharp sting of truthfulness cut deep.
Emily snarled with a flared nostrils, she shoved Jess into the wall forcing Jess to bang her head. Spike of stabbing pain arced into the back of Jess’ skull. Her vision blurred for a second, and she bit her accidentally tongue, but she was okay.
Shocked more than hurt, despite her familiarity with violence the intensity of the unexpected attack still surprised her. Jess didn’t hear whatever Emily had said while shoving her.
Jess did catch the following words,
“Fuck off and die you lying sack of shite.” Emily screamed at her.
Jess hunched her shoulders and used her arms to shield and hide her body. She placed her left foot forward with her hips turned to the side to continue her flimsy protection. Her head bowed, she still refused to deny her words.
She still had a spark of defiance. Her right as the weak to moral superiority in the face of the strong.
Looking at the quivering Jess, strummed a cord in Emily’s conscience. She was a bully, not that she would acknowledge it, but she wasn’t a violent one. Clash between her righteous view of herself with what she’d done was too much.
Emily ran away.
The only person Jess had talked to all day at school and it had been about boys. She wasn’t even sure she liked boys. Jess was certain she didn’t like Emily. The girl clearly hated her and came round to mock her.
“Fucking fleshbag.” Jess muttered under her breath, the air spewing from her mouth like a dragon’s breath.
As meaningless as the confrontation was with her alter ego (her devil and pair) it did brutalise her.
An unhappy young teen. School was boring, people were hell and opportunity a word said and as real as unicorns. So, she played her game in the cold. All too soon the end of lunch bell rang.
After school came the worst of it. After school she had to go home.
Home was a strange word to describe where she slept and stayed with her blood family. Litter and garbage docrated the place because social services weren’t coming by any time soon. Without oversight, neglect festered.
She tried to scurry to her room like a rodent fleeing a feline hunter.
A dark shadow cast over her from behind.
Gruff, deep voice that sent chills down her back and made the hairs on her arms stand on end, “Why’d you have a bump on your head?”
Jess scrambled for a response, and her panic stricken expression hidden by facing away from him.
“I fell.” She squeaked not unlike a timorous beastie
Dad grabbed her and turned about, “Face me.” He demanded without question the eversure patriarch.
She couldn’t look him in the eye and fixed her attention on how dirty the floor was.
She knew that he would be stroking his beard, grooming himself out of habit as he looked down on his daughter.
“You getting into fights little shite?”
“I fell.” She insisted with a desperate (and telling) shout.
He withdrew one hand, but kept the other placed a hand on her shoulder and held her with a firm grip. She couldn’t move if she tried, and she’d long given up trying.
No, no, no, no. Her thoughts spiralled. Please don’t hurt me. She wound up: her muscles tensed into a protective shield with her stomach tightening into a wall and her teeth bit together to keep her jaw fixed.
The punch never came.
“Lying to your own father.” He tutted and shook his head.
Her stomach sank, taking Jess with it into a pit of fear and despair.
He spoke with slick charm carrying over from his sales work, “You deserve to be punished. You lied. You shouldn’t tell lies and of all people it was to me.” His voice became a guttural roar and his last word.
He raised a palm, and gestured with his fingers. “Where is it?”
Jess shook her head violently, “No.”
“Hand it over. This is your fault.”
“No!” The loudness of her refusal was equal to its lack of effect.
“Where is it you little fat shite?” He manhandled her.
An outsider without context might have mistaken the scene as a loving father roughly playing with his giggling daughter. But, her high pitched cries came from fear and distress. A feeble, futile protest of a child trying to sway a parent to do as they wished.
Her cries fell on deaf ears.
He ripped the Switch from her hands. He held it out of reach and with thumb and finger like it was a disgusting bug.
Not her game. Please.
She sobbed fat tears. Tears that would only bring further pain, but not through any fault of hers. A father was afoot and he was angry.
He scowled, and clutching his ringing head told her, “Shut up, you fat fuck.”
She heard the front door creaking open and in walked her brother. She saw naught with her bowed head and her vision blurring with tears.
“Let her go.” Her brother said with cold fury.
Lost in her own loss she missed her brother’s and father’s exchange. She snapped back when she watched dad hit her brother. Heel met solar plexus. Her brother’s face distorted with pain, air retreating from his lungs and scarred with intense anxiety.
Why had she cried? Now, her brother was taking the punishment.
Better than me again.
She thought.
Now brother can think of himself as a hero again. Her protector.
Dad shouted again.
Brother wasn’t always around.
Mum poked her head out from the kitchen. Her lip curled and she left. Mum turned a blind eye. Jess bet Mum was glad it wasn’t her this time.
Dad had dropped her Switch after he had turned his hungover rage onto her brother.
Jess scooped it up and walked to her room. There was nothing more she could do. She tried and failed to shout at him to stop before. She beat a retreat for her room.
She cradled her Switch as if it was a newborn baby (or more to Jess’ mind a Togepi). Beau her dog gave her a loud woof recognising Jess immediately. The illusion of safety settled over her like the web of a spider trapping its prey.
The door opened.
She spun round.
A meaty fist dug into and hollowed out her belly. In a cartoonish distortion she slumped onto his arm with panicking desperate gasp for air.
It was less that he’d aimed for her belly than the back for the force he had punched her.
“Fat shite, don’t walk away from me again.”
He spat on her.
“You can get it back when you have properly apologised.”
The door shut with a bang that rattled the room. Maybe just her mind.
She was stuck there for a long time. When she looked up again she noticed he’d taken the Switch again.
She wept again, still having more tears to spend. She cried into Beau soft fur. Beau mewled, and Jess sobbed with her only friend in the world. Jess went into bed and under the covers, Beau leapt up following Jess.
Jess hugged Beau, and dug out her phone. She called the usual helpline to talk.
“Hello, you’re through to helpline. How are you doing today?”
“Awful…”
It isn’t an optimistic ending here, but talking about her feelings isn’t the worst thing.
Her cynicism softened, and her mind was a wee bit healthier for it.
Jess played more pokemon again after she got a Switch back from Dad. She talked through her feelings with the counsellor and what to do once she was done talking.
Police never did succeed in building a case against the dad.
Not a ‘just’ and fair end to our story or to this piece of her life. Neither hopeful nor tragic, Jess’ life continues, unfinished and she is indeterminate (big word, I know). While stuck in school for the moment, she moves on wide open to new people and new meanings.
Empowered by supportive strangers, she has space virtual and social to create new memories and relive past joys. Crises and turning points are coming; her story is unfinished.
But the homicidal urge once hatched lingered on. A resentment all too valid.
They can all go die.